We need Acorn back...

Read that this lunchtime while on break. I’m glad somebody is looking to make something useful in a small form factor with a keyboard. These touch screen devices are fine for browsing websites and watching kitten videos, but you need a keyboard if you’re going to get some work done.

I used my S3a right up until the point when I had a computer with no serial port. I used it even after having Android phones, because while Android is vastly more powerful than the S3a, it sucked at getting stuff done. A bluetooth keyboard goes a long way to alleviate the problem, but it’s hardly a nice portable arrangement, given I could line up five or six phones side by side and it’d still be smaller than the keyboard…

This, in spades (or more likely no trumps, doubled, redoubled, and vulnerable).

Any work I’m liable to do away from my desk is doable on a PC laptop (spit – but it’s currently all I have) but I like a decent keyboard for my desk machine(s). Tablets? You can keep ’em. Likewise smart phones.

I used to find the S3a was quite pleasant to type on. Never had an S5.

Tablets? You can keep ’em.

Surprisingly the iPad Mini is quite responsive to touch typing on the screen. Though, too much of that messes with my finger joints as there’s no give or flexibility in repeatedly poking a piece of glass.
On my phone I swipe-type. That means I put my finger on the first letter, then drag it around to spell out the word, then let go. It’s a pretty fast way to type as you may have seen from some of my messages, provided – of course – that the word I wanted and the word the phone picks are identical. Which is sometimes not the case. ;-)

This? Typed on a PC using a flattish Microsoft wireless keyboard with touchpad. It’s not bad, exactly, it’s just kind of awkward as, being a leftie, the built-in touchpad is on the wrong side…

The RISC OS keyboard is a cheap standard keyboard, like you might find in Tesco for a tenner. It’s possibly the best of the lot. Okay, it’s a membrane with springs in it, but then so were all the Acorn ones after the serious weirdness that was the A310’s keyboard (tin foil circles stuck to foam stuck to the bottom of the key – never seen anything like it).

The thing is, typing on a screen (by whatever method) is nowhere near as flexible as typing on a keyboard. And if you will excuse one small obscenity, Android’s text selection is shit. Completely and utterly abysmal. It tries to be like iOS with each incarnation, but it just fails so hard when you can drag up to skip over a line or paragraph and the next thing you know you’re at the top of the document with everything selected. Then dragging around the start/end handles is just insane. I have a dinky drone. Let me tell you, flying the drone in a straight like takes less finger finesse than trying to select text in Android.
Give me the shift key and the cursors. Or failing that, RISC OS’ method is a bit clumsy but it is functional. So doing real work on a real computer, so much nicer.

I have a cheapest-in-the-shop (£4.50) keyboard for the Pi. Nice comfortable keys, easy on the fingers, fingers find the keys easily. Mac wireless keyboard and trackpad for the Mac – separate items, so you can put the trackpad on the left if you want to. I’ve got used to the keyboard, but for 11 times the price it’s not actually as comfortable as the cheapo one. But wireless is worth it, especially when I’m shunting keyboards, trackpad and mouse around to switch between Mac and Pi. Oh to be able to use the Mac keyboard and trackpad with the Pi, switched over like switching the monitor over… 8~) (Or some other wireless keyboard with both…)

The trackpad is the first mouse-equivalent I’ve found that I actually prefer to a Marconi Trackerball. Must get round to converting one of those to USB to use with the Pi – unless someone can make a trackpad work with the Pi, of course…

Mac wireless keyboard and trackpad for the Mac – separate items, so you can put the trackpad on the left if you want to. I’ve got used to the keyboard, but for 11 times the price it’s not actually as comfortable as the cheapo one.

You know when it comes down to it if you take the bit I’ve quoted and substitute the “Mac” for any other Apple product and then use the “for 11 times the price” modified with an appropriate multiplier between 2 and some number with 2 digits then you can finish off with “it’s not actually”… …worth it
At that point I think you’ve got a viable statement covering all eventualities.

Edit: Using a reference from a presentation today, Apple are relying on the cat factor (substitute cat with Apple)

I’ve grown to hate Windows so much that the Mac was worth it. And then £50 for a keyboard is a lot, but it means I’ve got a decent (if not perfect) wireless keyboard with the Mac. No doubt I could get some other wireless keyboard that would work with the Mac, but I could easily spend £50 trying to find it. Possibly likewise the wireless trackpad, that I paid the same price for, but I’m not sure there’s anything else quite like it on the market. (I see the prices have gone up a lot since I got those – as has the price of the Mac Mini.)

Pound Avoirdupois, not Pound Sterling. Long obsolete in this application; went out with the introduction of the Metric System in about 1795, but remained in use in backward countries like the UK until much more recently.

There never was any justification for calling # a £ symbol. A lb symbol if you’re a historian, perhaps.

The historical justification shown on the wikipedia page is like many such things – written by a person with no knowledge of the handwriting of the era. I’ve noted such people transcribe Audrey as Oidrey because they aren’t used to reading that letter formation and assume an uppercase “a” would look like a handwritten “A”

WRT the # £:
Look closely at the image of the handwritten item from Isaac Newton, flatten both upper loops into simple ascenders and remove the bottom right to top left and left-right flourish. What do you have? lb
No relation to the “hash” character anymore than the glyph created when I write my initials makes me a close relative of the (deceased) artist formerly known as Prince

North American the sign #, representing a pound as a unit of weight or mass, or used as a symbol on a phone keypad or computer keyboard.

I remember back in the mid-90s, we’d just got a voice-capable modem at home and I was trying out the software that came with it. “Record a greeting then press pound”. At that point I thought that American phones actually had £ in place of #!

Meanwhile some of you would probably feel a bit lost here in NZ; apparently our old rotary phones had the numbers in the opposite order from usual, and we currently use the US layout for computer keyboards. You get £ under RISC OS by pressing Shift-Alt-3, and under MacOS by pressing Option-3. As for Windows, I have no idea!

I also remember when Windows 8 came out, adding support for proper English. There were two distinct install DVDs; an American one and an international one. So I put the international DVD in, booted up, and had to do something at the command line. I try to type “C:\” and it pops up with “C:#” instead!

Of course there’s always, one of my favourites, the totally incorrect “lazer” to play with :)
Arguments about it being a “difference of opinion” fall short of anything approaching intelligence since LASER is actually an acronym derived from “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”.

Interesting; growing up in NZ I learned that -ise is the correct (“British”) way and that -ize is the yucky American way. Both Microsoft and Apple’s spellcheckers reject -ize when the country is set to NZ.

As for the claim that -ise is American, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s soccer all over again!